Poems for Persons of Interest

  Editor’s Note Memory, in the phrase of Oliver Tearle, is an “exercise in nostalgia”. We visit our past to regret decisions, laugh out loud at joyful moments, and seek answers to an endless list of questions. In this issue, we have curated a collection of 39 poems from poets visiting the space between past and present   Jane Berger walks us through the “scouring memory” of a traumatic childhood experience in “Four Years Old,” both becoming and comforting the little girl she was.    “Elephant” by M.D. Skeen shows how personal recollection can be selective and painful. The poet's use of detail and direct address makes us see how two people can experience the same event but remember it differently.   Marie Burdett’s tender “Love in Memoriam” keeps love alive despite the sharpness of a lover's absence.   Sometimes you remember with all your senses. In Stephen Mead 's “The Wearable Scrapbook,” memory is stored in objects as something tactile, not abstract. ...

  Four Years Old With his claw-arm he caught my wrist, dragged me to the water, my heels dug shallow ruts to the sand. He walked deeper in. Ribs cinched against his torso, lids scrunched, mucoused face pressed against his chest, mouth pinched tight to dam the flood, I hung surfboard stiff. Inhaling thrashing waves, I hiccoughed, coughed foam. Flooding, flooding. Then, as if he’d tamed a beast— chin lifted, Father turned, slowly bobbed to shore, dropped me like a hefty suitcase. Head drooped forward, wobbling, I stepped around plaid and striped blankets with bathers, stared hard at grains of sand that shifted between my toes, scouring memory. I reached Mother talking with my sisters. My face must have been illegible as a shell, I sat, wheezed. Later, in slow motion I ventured to the edge of spent waves, filled my pink pail with sand; its moist weight pulled my right arm long. Softly I spoke to my two sisters about sand pies, castles, and wheezed. How often had I been caught? For eac...

Carried for my tiny sons whom Heaven holds Hush, my heart, be still. Breathe in peace. Hold. Release the days from memory’s grasp and bury the weight of hopeless prayers   in peace. Hold. Release the days, every second, minute, hour with the weight of hopeless prayers. Haunting dreams carry my tiny ones   every second, minute, hour. With each breath they never took, haunting dreams carry my tiny ones further from my empty womb.   Each breath they never took catches in my keening-hoarse throat. Further from my empty womb, this burden of lost boys   catches in my keening. Hoarse throat and memories gasp. And I bury this burden of lost boys, hush my heart. Still, I breathe.

  Numb I need to feel the past without becoming Suffused in it.   But memory is numbing.

  Summer Stock Here in the sun-crushed semi-dark, it’s strange to think that, at this moment, other girls about my age are slouching by the pool, and sprawling on his lap, and drinking beer, and scrawling notes in paperbacks, and dating.   Drugged up in this hot curtained kitchen, waiting for something or for nothingness, I hear the sounds they told me would remain at school: their music’s muffled thuds, the whooping calls… No use in writing out Nothing has changed.   Not much ever has. Feeling its glow in unsurprised astonishment, I eat, then hurry to the upstairs loo and purge, and smoke, and type out squibs, and thank the Lord for walls and window-blinds and double-glazing.   Nothing has changed. And yet it seems amazing that summer this year came without a word, that, when it did, the once-attendant surge— this year, I’ll use it! —didn’t. I retreat, and wonder what it is I still don’t know.

  Self-Portrait as Triolet for Tree There is a name which will bind me forever. At its behest, I exist. In its shadow, I bide my time. I plait my hair forever there. Is a name which will bind me for ever his? Am I the echo of a fall into forever? Word me what our bodies knew. Willow. Shadow. There is a name which will bind me forever At its behest. I exist in its shadow. 

Kierkegaard to His Shadow Near a Stream My head is a hyphen positioned between these two words. She conjures me. Erotically, she is at fault. An eternity between My head is a hyphen. Positioned between rings to bind a thing indissolubly, between pious rememberings that terrorize me — my head is a hyphen, positioned. Between these two words: she conjures me.

  Memory Her songbirds gossip lost nouns   and I wonder what she must have thought as the words began to blend into sounds   protein and coconut oil at every meal my mother flutters on the edge of her seat   carnation-sized bruises bloom on the back of her hands his name bitten into the ribs of her tongue.

“Questions are Powerful Weapons” for Stellaluna Rodriguez Your poem made me laugh—I think—I mean— is that a crime?—it might be—after all, to be as—serious—or should we call it “real”—as life deserves—is rarely seen, And yet—your poem got there—moving between ideas—as a halfback—moves the ball— across—a broken field—as tacklers fall behind—and meaning moves—and comes to mean   more, in the open sky above the page than words denote—condensing—like a cloud— looking down—eyelessly—upon the crowd— while someone—struts and frets—across the stage— the singer’s words—like ours—rain down in sheets— turn mud—then feed—the secret, hidden seeds.

  The Waiting Momentarily she steps away from her vigil and suddenly, a stillness. He has receded even from dreams. His memory is an abyss she skirts like the frayed edge of a rug an excess of love has ruined. The loom by day dances its song; by night, like the mind, unravels. Over the vastitude of the hall gazes flit as each holds the other captive. As the garden unburdens itself, so does the mind. The bruising tapestry attests the languor of the house. Masters of impatience, the goats cannibalize each other. We construct our prisons by hand, weaving memory into memory. How much of a man is made from the measure of what he’s left behind?   II The stranger entered like a breeze through stiffened linen. Futilely we seek our dead in the faces of strangers, the bereft heart drifting, instinctive and sightless, into the most familiar harbor. When he knelt in front of her longing, its ripeness burst open like a severed thigh. You do not recognize blindness until its consummation, j...

  Hymn to Mnemosyne Mnemosyne’s the Mother of the Muses because the test of every work of art is how well everyone remembers it whatever the process of memory whether its claws dig in to be dislodged only with torn flesh and long lacerations or stings like bees and wasps piercing the skin disperse its irritant through all the blood or burr-like bracts thousands of tiny hooks latch on to every purchase the mind offers so efforts to detach attach it firmer until it can no longer be distinguished from what was there at first and has become part of ourselves to live and die with us

  The Persistence of Unsteady old man, hide so paper thin, a passing bump against the door may raise a livid purple welt beneath my skin as ruptured, rusty veins seep blood for days. So, now my task is keeping things contained. Like blood, my thoughts, my work, time set for prayer face drag of dissipation. Unconstrained I lose my focus and then – nothing there.   The force of life flows fullest when embraced by arteries and lungs and liturgies, by verse through which love’s patterns may be traced, all earthly pipes which channel mysteries. What leaks through vessel walls is lost and gone: the strength retained by Grace still bears me on.

The Envoi of Song After  Grey Seascape with Black Boat, Catterline , Joan Eardley My eye is the line cast out Into the brine, hidden   In smears and scores of waves That draw the eye to the depths;   Who lies down there but the drowned Refusing their legs, vanished   In white caps, in the envoi of song, given over; given over; gone to verse.   On salt-bitten shore my salmon-heart Refuses clear water.

Star Trails for my photographer husband After sundown, due south of the lighthouse, You fixed the tripod, its impossible Extended legs you’d modified yourself Stuck deep in Hudson mud to hold the camera Still, while your canoe was drifting tide-ward. Polaris hung due North above the beacon. Firing twice a minute for an hour You photographed the way the steady stars Revealed a pattern to the turning world.   When I was little, Dad took us star-watching. The coldest nights were always clearest; winter Was best to contemplate the Milky Way, All on our backs in some field in the dark. Dad told us names of stars, and with his flashlight Picked out the constellations on his chart, Translating for us every dotted pattern With its Greek name and fairytale story. We saw the Leonids, the Geminids, And once, in the small hours or we’d have missed it, A comet with a wedding train of light That streamed and spanned halfway across the sky. We knew who had designed this. Dad’s delight Was of the ...

Guzzle The best gift was the ways you loved water. Not place-specific, but a regard of water—   In the local pool, camped out up-creek, Or, at church, the holy dove water—   Of its raw necessity. Cats’ paws knead The sunset sea. Fuchsia, saffron, mauve water.   These ashes join the twice-daily baptism Of cordgrass ( S. alterniflora ), now above water;   Now below, as the tide gulps and gargles, Slurps and burps out rough water.   These narrow channels —what are they Called? Runnels? Scrolling usgs-dot-gov: “water?”   Some back-of-Burke regional English word, That’s what you called this kind of water.

Case File for Something that Refuses to Be Gone Case file opens without sound. Ink arrives before record.   Item 001: a spoon still warm from a hand that no longer agrees it existed. Item 002: a childhood afternoon, folded wrong, returned unsigned. Item 003: the tone of my name when spoken by someone already rehearsing absence.   The clerk does not look up. Absence files more cleanly when unseen.   I am asked to describe what is missing without weather, without grief, without anything that suggests breath.   So I comply.   It was here. It learned not to be.   The difference is administrative.   A stamp drops like judgment without witness.   The file thickens with what cannot be retrieved but insists on remaining legible.

                                                                                                                                                                        

On the Death of a Christian Child (after a poem in the Latin Anthology ) You were noble. You were innocent and young. You died and, dying, wrung out tears from all. But since the mind unstained approaches heaven, And for the just lies open heaven’s hall, Let us praise, damning tears, your young demise, Who, hurried to the stars, now sinless shine. The swiftness of your death, happy for you, Proves not that you were callous to my sighs, But that you so pleased God he’d not delay To bring you home to paradise today.

  Love in Memoriam At night I long for you. For all the darks we spent, euphoric with young love. The blush of sunset pounded in my chest. The sparks of stars gleamed in your eyes. And summer, lush   with greens that burst and swayed and grew, with pinks that hazed the sky, embraced us like a bubble. We made the promises of youth that thinks love is an easy thing.                                       I’m in that rubble now, and I gasp like wind on barren spaces. The harvest moon casts quiet shafts of cold. Slow combines stubble corn. The fireplace is waiting for your return to be consoled.   Your chair, still warm, does not believe you’re gone. What does it take for dark to turn to dawn?

  First Memory: Soft-Boiled Egg Lunchtime; I’m in my highchair throne. My mother aims the hated spoon of soft-boiled egg at my bud-tight mouth: the warm and almost liquid yolk, the not-quite done-right albumen.   She’s insistent, importunate, so I open up; the spoon goes in. Years later, she confessed: she found the eggs disgusting too. “But good for you, soft-boiled eggs,” she said.

On These Earthly Nights Perhaps she simply needs one tie – just someone walking home at night across his still and silent town who in an instant is struck blind by words he’s read, when in their light baroquely braided wings reach down through leafless elms, past midnight’s dome that arcs above his human sight. Her poem offers to surround him. It might also be, till then, he’d only lacked one verse that shone its benediction, lacked the right bright image flashed on inner lens so he, too, finally feels at home in exile on these earthly nights.

Outing After Emily Dickinson, “I started Early – Took my Dog” I started early – took my dolphin and wandered as I went. The ribbons of the seaweed curls were all the coin I spent.   Started early – took my dollop of sweet and creamy clouds, fine-spun threads – one mounting bulk that echoed dark – and loud.   I started early – took my dole of tender life – and crumbs. A clatter offstage jittered me in shades of quince and plum.   I started early – took my doll to settle – shaky hands. The ears of scent – the taste of sky bewildered every plan.

  Have Mercy on the Children Who Were Chosen Have mercy on the children who were chosen; For what was given can be given back. Have mercy on the family of spare parts Assembled by a judge with stamp and pen.   We look with longing on the accidents: On fumbling teenagers who lose their heads, On babies kept in panic and despair, On fate; on flesh and blood with flesh and blood.

  Mother's Lessons She taught me gin rummy and badminton, to make Chef Boyardee Pizza with a crust ten-cent thin,   to cut a chicken into pieces, fry it in a pan of Crisco, to keep my thoughts inside my head, to walk on eggshells   if I let one slip out my mouth, to hover at the edge of a room, to remember she was listening, even when   I didn’t know she was there. I learned that homework came before play, that a “B” was a debacle,   that a hairbrush was not meant to collect hair. That I could make my bed before I was out of it, that praise   given in public would not change her silent stare in private. I watched her   destroy a lifelong friendship over a pair of black pumps. Today I sat beside her bed, read to her, held   her leathery hand in mine, kissed her cold cheek, because I know what it means to need small mercies.   She taught me that.

Riparian Zone Fremont River–Torrey, Utah Remember gray-green tamarisk shadows, grasses Watered by a river’s lapping shallows. Remember mule deer browsing fallen apples, Orchards planted outside vanished cabins Built by men who planted a society Briefly in that crease of dry red rock Greening in the merciless sunshine.   Remember: we could walk beneath those trees, Where water glimmers in the thirsty desert. We could see again the long dry twilight’s Cool onset: sharpness giving way to shadow, Long-eared mule deer, brindled in the fingering Tree-shapes, grazing silver-seed-tipped grasses, Fallen apples softening to water.

  On a Silver Thimble of the Tudor Era, Found in the Grass Outside Gwydir Castle, Conway, Wales She dropped it—how? bright fingertip of sun?— Down deep in meadow grass that afternoon Sometime during the reign of Elizabeth One,   Or earlier? A day of smoke and thin Midsummer light? A picnic? Weather fine For the time of year, the hills an austere brown   Upswell beneath high haze? A smell of stone, Lichen-green? Fires kindled, axe swept down? Herself on the grass, stitching a length of white linen?

  On Mornings When I Clean My Grave I think of endings and beginnings, sweep away the leaves that shine like fallen stars, wipe headstones, collect loose trash and browned bouquets and nod to all the quiet, patient dead.

  Ceci n'est pas une orange At three, the world ensorcelled me, gilded my eyes to glory: a hummingbird hovering over a leaf or an earthworm entertaining dirt. Look up, look down, no lack of images to feed my wonder. If my mother gave me an orange, she would peel it so completely I didn’t know it came stitched with pith. It was a grade school teacher— a tall, peristeronic woman bobbing along the blackboard—who divested me of my adulation, insisted oui, ceci est vraiment une orange though I desperately wanted to not believe her.

  Incorruptible I smell the bleeding sap oozing from the clean- cut evergreen trunk.   I wish that when I die my human body might smell half so sweet.